Worth sharing... Denis Leary Apologizes

I have nothing but admiration and sympathy for the people I know who are raising children with autism. In fact, they were the inspiration for the chapter I wrote about the subject. To them - and to all parents of children with autism - I apologize for any pain the out-of-context quotes from my book may have caused.

I can only imagine how upsetting reading the remarks excerpted from my upcoming book must be for any parent of a child with autism. All I can say is that the quotes from my book that caused so much pain were taken out of context and selectively edited.

It was never my intention to exploit the serious subject of autism. It was my intention to expose the adults in this country who seek to use any available medical avenue to justify their own failures. What I wrote was not directed towards children who have autism.

I do not say in the book - and I have never said - that autism does not exist. In fact, the chapter dealing with autism in my book discusses the struggle of close friends of mine to raise a child with autism.

As I’ve said before, taking one or two sentences out of context is unfair and misleading. Too often in this country, everything gets reduced to simple sound bites and very, very often those sound bites are not truly representative of an author or artist’s point of view.